Mission impossible: Search for Solomon's treasure

(Jerusalem Post) Just over a hundred years ago, in August 1909, a luxury yacht sailed into Jaffa harbor. It carried Captain Montague Parker and a group of his friends, with some rudimentary mining equipment and a stash of pounds sterling. Parker was on his way to Jerusalem to find the treasures of Solomon’s Temple that, he had been told, were hidden in a secret passage under the Temple Mount.

Montague Parker had been an officer in the Grenadier Guards and distinguished himself in action during the Boer War in South Africa. He had risen to the rank of major but retained his substantive rank of captain, that being better known to the world at large. At the end of the war he was at a loose end and happened to meet a Finnish amateur Bible scholar called Valter Juvelius, who had researched arcane Hebrew and other documents and come to the conclusion that the Temple artifacts were to be found in a secret location in Jerusalem. All he needed was the money to mount an expedition to search for the ancient treasures.